The Xiongnu were a confederation of nomadic peoples who dominated the eastern Eurasian steppe from the third century BC to the late first century AD. They were the first steppe empire of which we have detailed historical knowledge, and they established many of the political, military, and diplomatic patterns that would shape steppe life for the next two thousand years. The Xiongnu are also widely considered to be the ancestors, in whole or in part, of the later Mongols, and the parallel between the Xiongnu confederation and the later Mongol Empire is one of the most striking features of steppe history.
The Rise of the Xiongnu
The Xiongnu confederation was founded in the third century BC by a chieftain named Modu Shanyu, who unified the various tribes of the eastern steppe through a combination of military conquest and political marriage. The name “Xiongnu” is the Chinese transcription of a tribal name that is otherwise unknown, although the etymology has been connected to the Turkic or Mongolic words for “fierce” or “warlike.” The confederation included a wide variety of peoples, including proto-Turkic, proto-Mongolic, and possibly proto-Tungusic groups, and it was held together by the personal authority of the Shanyu and by the regular distribution of gifts and feasts.
The Xiongnu confederation reached its height in the late second and early first centuries BC, when it controlled most of the territory from the Altai Mountains in the west to the Great Wall of China in the south and to the forests of Manchuria in the east. The confederation maintained a sophisticated system of cavalry warfare, based on the use of mounted archers and on tactics of feigned retreat and envelopment that would be used by steppe peoples for the next two thousand years. The Xiongnu also developed a system of military organization, with a decimal structure of units of ten, a hundred, a thousand, and ten thousand, that was strikingly similar to the decimal system later used by the Mongols.
The Xiongnu and the Han Dynasty
The Xiongnu were a persistent threat to the Chinese Han Dynasty, and the relationship between the two powers was one of the central features of early Chinese foreign policy. The Han court adopted a two-pronged strategy toward the Xiongnu: a policy of military campaigns designed to weaken the confederation, combined with a policy of diplomatic engagement, including the use of marriage alliances and the payment of tribute. The most famous of the Han envoys to the Xiongnu was Zhang Qian, who traveled to the Xiongnu court in the late second century BC and whose reports provided the Chinese with much of their knowledge of Central Asia. Zhang Qian’s travels are often considered the beginning of the Silk Road.
The Xiongnu and the Han Dynasty fought a series of major wars over the course of the second and first centuries BC. The most famous of these wars was the campaign of the Han general Huo Qubing, who led a series of devastating cavalry raids into the Xiongnu heartland in the 120s and 110s BC and who succeeded in weakening the Xiongnu confederation to the point of collapse. The Xiongnu eventually split into southern and northern branches in the late first century BC, with the southern branch submitting to the Han Dynasty and the northern branch withdrawing to the west.
The Decline of the Xiongnu
The Xiongnu confederation declined in the late first century AD, after a long period of internal dissension and external pressure. The northern branch of the Xiongnu withdrew westward across the Eurasian steppe, and the southern branch was eventually assimilated into the Chinese population. The Xiongnu disappeared from the historical record in the late first century AD, and the eastern steppe was subsequently dominated by a succession of other peoples, including the Xianbei, the Rouran, the Göktürks, and the Uyghurs.
The westward migration of the northern Xiongnu is one of the most famous episodes of steppe history. The Xiongnu are often identified with the Huns, who appeared in the historical record in the fourth century AD and who subsequently invaded the Roman Empire under the leadership of Attila. The identification is not certain — the Huns may have been a different people entirely, or a coalition of various steppe peoples including Xiongnu — but the parallel between the Xiongnu and the Huns is striking, and many historians believe that the Xiongnu were at least partly ancestral to the Huns.
The Legacy of the Xiongnu
The legacy of the Xiongnu is profound. The confederation established the patterns of steppe life that would shape the political and military history of the Eurasian steppe for the next two thousand years: the centralized khan, the assembly of tribal leaders, the diplomatic relationship with China, the decimal military system, the use of mounted archers. The Xiongnu also established the cultural traditions of the steppe: the worship of the eternal blue sky, the veneration of the ancestors, the practice of installing the widow of a deceased chieftain as a kind of regent.
The relationship between the Xiongnu and the later Mongols is also important. The Xiongnu confederation was the first major steppe power to dominate the eastern Eurasian plateau, and the later Mongols inherited many of the political and military traditions of the Xiongnu. The parallel between the two confederations is striking: both were based on the unification of the various tribes of the eastern steppe, both were organized along decimal lines, both maintained a complex diplomatic relationship with China, and both eventually collapsed under the combined pressure of internal division and external enemies.
The Xiongnu are also important for the history of the Silk Road. The Xiongnu controlled the trade routes that connected China to Central Asia, and the diplomatic relationship between the Xiongnu and the Han Dynasty helped to open up these routes to Chinese merchants and diplomats. The Silk Road, which would later be the most important trade route of the medieval world, had its origins in the diplomatic and commercial exchanges of the Xiongnu and the Han.
Sources
- David Morgan, The Mongols (2nd ed., Oxford, 2007).
- Peter Jackson, The Mongols and the West, 1221–1410 (London, 2005).
- Timothy May, The Mongol Conquests in World History (London, 2012).